Review of “Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education,” 2d. ed., 2012,by Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, New York: Teachers College Press, paper, 244 pages.
This is indeed an opportune time to talk about this important book again. Chicago streets are becoming crazier. Nights are becoming more dangerous. The number of homeless people is rising steadily.
A huge lack of understanding—and lack of respect—plagues the rich Chicago people who live indoors. But not about them. They are the ones who do not understand their poor brothers and sisters who live outdoors.
Just recently, I wrote a piece that reminded helpers who go out into the streets that they should avoid interfering with the structures, agreements, and locations of the people who dwell there. The idea was that researchers, social workers, helpers, and mentors in the streets would refrain from doing more harm than good. (See “Traveling in Street Cultures,” by Thomas Hansen, StreetSense, July 29, 2022.)
One main point important to consider is that there is some kind of “order” to how things are arranged and how things happen out there. The streets, especially at night, belong to a different population of citizens than they do during the day. The donut shop, the bank, and the corner grocery store all have one set of people during the day: A manager, three workers, a mailman who drops off letters to all three at about noon, and a UPS who goes to one of these businesses each day.
At night, there may be a dozen different people walking by these closed businesses: a homeless woman who sleeps on a bedroll in front of the donut shop, a young couple selling cigarettes and joints in front of the bank, and an elderly gentleman who sleeps in a wheelchair in front of the corner grocery store—asking for change from passersby until about midnight, at which time he calls it a night. That leaves one person wandering around drunk trying to find the bus, two people waiting for an Uber or taxi, three people buying cigarettes, and two guys who walk into the grocery to buy beer and Pampers—and on their way out give a couple dollars to the man in the wheelchair.
There might even be two graduate students with clipboards asking the people in front of the businesses about their needs, goals, hopes, aspirations, and desires. A few people may respond to the questions. The students have arrived in a brand new foreign car with city plates on it, but they do not understand why people sleep outdoors. They actually do not think there is any connection.
The graduate students offer each person who responds to their questions a $5 gift certificate to McDonalds. That will buy a small coffee and a breakfast sandwich. That is—if there is a McDonalds nearby. If the recipient does not have money on their CTA card (for bus, train) then the card gets traded for something else, with someone who has a way to go use the card.
Mixing daytime people and nighttime people does not work. The daytime people think they have an opinion and they should control the acts and speech of the individuals who people the area at night. They try to break up fights, they violate territory rights, and they confuse the “order” by talking to the wrong people in the wrong spots. They also create frustration and anger among the night people by openly waving large amounts of cash in front of strangers on the streets, and by giving person A money, food, socks, or bottles of soda pop in front of person B, for whom they have nothing left because they have depleted their stock on the other person. All of this can lead to fights, beatings, arguments, and stabbings.
This sounds terribly dramatic to the outsiders—the daytime people that is—who pass by the setting and think it is a shame these “semi-crazy” people cannot get along, cannot get a job, cannot get real, and cannot fit in.
Researchers, social workers, students, visitors, and the occasional drunk who has been grossly over-served in the nearby dive bar all wander around while business negotiations, greetings, leave-takings, and time-passings all occur just as on every other night. Things happen how they happen, and the night activities and the night people are all in the painting, all back on stage.
The problem is the degree of intrusion into the nighttime activities that these foreigners bring into the setting.
Even Captain Kirk would get in trouble for violating the Prime Directive — the guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. This has other names, such as the Starfleet General Order 1.
Captain Kirk was often in trouble — or close to getting into trouble — for violation the Prime Directive (which he did every single chance he got). On the streets, everybody from the daytime setting seems to want to go to the nighttime setting and, well, just generally raise hell.
Captain Kirk violating the Prime Directive as he explains the U.S. Constitution to primitive people in the episode called “The Omega Glory”
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Daytime people often try to use the rules of their culture with persons of the nighttime culture where it does not “fit” correctly, where they will cause all of the calamity the nighttime people do not like. There is already enough confusion in the order out their at night. More is not needed.
Nighttime people often refer negatively to the daytime people who “don’t understand anything and the rules of the night.” Daytime people come into the other setting disrespect the people in charge of—and helping coordinate—the order of the night. Whether people are homeless for three days or three months, they understand the order of the night. Whether people have been sitting in a wheelchair in front of a business collecting dollars for one week or one year, they understand the order of the night.
All of the above drives home the point everyone should have read my damn essay I wrote about this!
I mean, what are people thinking?
That brings us to why this book is essential for people to read: policymakers, students, professors, social workers, anyone interested in social justice, doctors, taxpayers, police officers, spelunkers, and others seeking the light all need to understand the culture of what happens at night.
The daytime shopkeepers and pedestrians need to read this book and in so doing may come to understand some basic principles of critical social justice literacy:
· Each of us has a culturally based worldview.
· We hold a common assumption that others share our worldview.
· We often assume that what we intend to communicate is received (p. xxvi).
The other information in the book is just as succinct. For example, the book provides very clear explanations of such concepts as “internalized dominance.” This term means “…internalizing and acting out (often unintentionally) the constant messages circulating in the culture that you and your group are superior to the minoritized group and thus entitled to your higher position” (p. 71).
Some examples of people acting out their internalized dominance are:
· Rationalizing privilege as natural (“It’s just human nature—someone has to be on top.”)
· Rationalizing privilege as earned (‘I worked hard to get where I am.”)
· Perceiving you and your group as the most qualified for and entitled to the best jobs (“She only got the position over me because she’s Black.”)
· Living one’s life segregated from the minoritized group yet feeling no loss or desire for connections with them (e.g., patterns of White flight rationalized as “I want my kids to grow up in a good neighborhood where they can play outside with their friends.”)
· Lacking an interest in the perspectives of the minoritized group except in limited and controlled doses (e.g., during ethnic authors week, or holidays such as Chinese New Year) or when it appears to benefit the dominant group (“I want my child to experience diversity.”)
· Feeling qualified to debate or explain away the experiences of minoritized groups (‘I think you are taking this too personally, I don’t think that’s what he meant.”)
“Internalized oppression” means accepting the subservient role, the lesser role, the assigned role, the inferior role (pp. 71-72).
The difficulty arises when persons in the nighttime setting do not wish to be subservient to and answer to the daytime persons, with their other boundaries, rules, speech, and traditions. The nighttime persons have their own culture. They have their own order.
The entire discussion above applies to nighttime persons (the homeless, the unhoused, los sin techos, the travelers, the unroofed) and the daytime persons (the rich, the microwave in their house, the working bathroom in their apartment, the warm bed in their condo) encroaching on their nighttime territory.
Recognizing there are two distinct cultures—and behaving appropriately in each—should be the law of the land. The daytime people deserve respect… that much is true.
Do the nighttime people deserve respect?